Jean Bart

Early life

Jean Bart was born in Dunkirk in 1650 to a seafaring family, the son of a sailor who has been described variously as a fisherman or corsair commander. He almost certainly spoke Flemish, at that time the native language in the region, and his birth name was probably Jan Baert.

Naval career

When he was young, Bart served in the Dutch navy under Admiral Michiel de Ruyter. When war broke out between France and the United Provinces in 1672, he entered the French service. Since persons not of noble birth in those days couldn't obtain the rank of officer in the navy, he became captain of one of the Dunkirk privateers. In this capacity he displayed astonishing bravery, so that Louis XIV sent him on a special mission to the Mediterranean, where he gained great distinction.

Unable to receive a command in the navy due to his low birth, he held an irregular sort of commission, but he had such success, however, that he became a lieutenant in 1679. He became a terror to the Dutch navy and a serious menace to the commerce of Holland. On one occasion, with six vessels, he broke through a blockading fleet, shattered a number of the enemy's ships, and convoyed a transport of grain safely into Dunkirk harbor. He rose rapidly to the rank of captain and then to that of admiral.

After the end of World War I she and her sister ship France were sent to the Black Sea to support Allied troops in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Jean Bart's crew mutinied out of sympathy for the Bolsheviks, but the mutiny was put down and she returned to the Mediterranean in 1920. She was partially modernized twice during the 1920s, but was deemed in too poor condition to be refitted again in the 1930s. Therefore, she was renamed Océan, disarmed and hulked in 1936 and became a harbour training ship in Toulon. The Germans captured her intact when they occupied Toulon in 1942 and used her for testing large shaped charge warheads. She was sunk by Allied bombing in 1944, but was raised and scrapped in 1945.

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